sRGB vs adobeRGB for photography - What YOU need to know!

Today I’m talking about colour space which is the sRGB, Adobe RGB and prophotoRGB profiles.

Colour spaces can be really confusing and there is a lot of conflicting information on line. But if you understand how it works, you can make better decisions in what to use, or what not to use, depending on what you intend on doing with your images. I am going to start with what colour profiles are, then the setting in camera and how it might affect your images, if at all… then how these different colour profiles will work in your computer.

There are so many different colour profiles and if you look at your computer display settings, you can pick so many different ones but for photography all you need to know about is sRGB, AdobeRGB(1998) and ProphotoRGB…these are set standards… so from the camera taking a photograph, through to editing and printing, you will, in theory, get the same colour and by the computer making mathematical calculations, it can keep these colours as consistent as possible.

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Thanks

Mike

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[stephenwoodburn]

While flying helicopters for the last 30 years, I am often asked how helicopters work, to explain the rotary wing aerodynamics. My answer is always the same, PFM (pure f'ing magic). That's kind of how I think color spaces work. With that said, the amount of time and research that you put into these videos to explain these things to us is very impressive and much appreciated. Thanks, Mike.

[TKN_NTBY]

absolutely underrated channel. Thanks for precious insights

[Rothmans]

All I can say is THANK YOU SO MUCH, Mike! This is much needed, and the fact that you were able to explain such a complicated topic in less than 20 minutes is absolutely amazing. This is a must watch video for all photographers/videographers. Thanks again! I'm definitely subscribing to this channel!

[OptimaMrL]

Brilliant tutorial. You’ve put in a single video what’s taken me 10 years to learn, and bits I forgot. It brings all key photography colour knowledge in one place.

[solverz]

This video FINALLY made me understand how colour management works ☺

[paulvo]

I always wondered about this subject of sRGB & AdobeRGB. I am happy you presented this topic, clearly & concisely. Thank you for your great work. 🙂

[writethisthat]

Thank you so much for putting this video together on a very complicated and confusing topic. You did a great job with this tutorial. No doubt I will be coming back here for reference.

[jjaylad]

My lightbulb moment a few years ago was to make my Monitors match a disappointing print I had just made, which was dull and had plugged up shadows. Then in LR I adjusted it until it looked the way I wanted. Since then, with that workflow, I have been completely happy with prints I make and with prints and photo books from labs. I suspect most use some 'industry standard' equipment calibration and whatever that is, they match my printer very closely. I switched from Adobe RGB to SRGB some time back ...possibly after watching an earlier video of yours that you mentioned that in. Keep up the great work!

[stephenschmid]

Thanks, Mike, excellent video. I hadn't realized that the camera's color space setting does not affect the Raw file, so that is an excellent piece of knowledge to acquire. Thank you!

[trevorshirley]

This video was the perfect amount of depth and information that I was looking for as a photographer. Thank you for all the effort you put into this video.

[kilombazo]

Mike thank you so much for taking the time to create this video, it really does explain a subject that is beyond confusing for the most of us. Your explanation to this topic was not only helpful and clean but entertaining as well. Thank you again mate! My head is spinning right now with new knowledge!

[STGJones]

Mike, Many thanks for explaining this so well, especially the differences in "save as" diagogue vs "export as" dialogue in PS and Lightroom. Youre a sRGB-AdobeRGB hero!

[johndunsmuir]

Mike, Thanks a bunch for a great video. I've spent a fair amount of time doing quantitative grayscale image analysis. I occasionally drifted into color analysis in petrographic thin sections. Your video raised many cautions for me to consider, a real eye-opener. Thanks again.

[shantanu]

Amazing knowledge for those who confused between color profiles 👏🏽👏🏽

[melmagallon]

This is probably the best vid I've seen on color management! Great job!

[GaryBox]

Useful video on what is a confusing topic. I visited the topic some years ago and my working space in the image editor was always set to ProPhoto RGB. I used to use the export for web option and had the srgb box checked so my images were being converted to srgb on export. Never had any issues.

Then very recently I decided to look into next gen images formats for my websites and started saving images to webp using the save as option. Once this, images were uploaded to social media and they looked really dull. I'm not aware of any check box on save as option. From your video it seems I need to convert the colour space to srgb just prior to opting to save as webp.

Going to look into that now as I'd like to use the widest colour space possible during the editing process. I've read that it's also best to work in 16bit or 24 bit colour space for more aggressive edits to avoid banding and other artifacts. I'm assuming if you leave the conversion to srgb to the final stage you will avoid artifacts?

[AngeloTullio]

Great and clear explanation on a subject sometimes not so easy to understand. Thanks!

[eiriklade]

Very good video. Quick and information dense, yet clear and easy to follow. Thanks!

[dwoodog]

Great video, but should we have touched on having a monitor that supports adobe RGB?

[adeepoberoi]

Thanks for a great video. I believe that if you want to edit in a bigger spage than rgb, for instance adobe rgb, you will need a monitor that you can switch to adobe rgb, you have much more color space to manipulate the photo. then when finished convert it to rgb for web usage. On a normal monitor (mostly simple rgb) you can not see the adobe color range.

From raw shot to edit in big color space (adobe rgb) with a monitor set to adobe rgb and then when finished convert to rgb for everyone to see.